


Cornflowers

by mirrorverses



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Aunt-Nephew Relationship, Aunts & Uncles, Canon-Typical Violence, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Genocide, Minor Character Death, Psychological Trauma, Tarsus IV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 23:08:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/945770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirrorverses/pseuds/mirrorverses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>People, Kirk decides one day, are a lot like cornflowers. they grow inside your heart and through your ribs, and when you try to rip them out, they leave behind little spots of rot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cornflowers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tarsusiv (axillaries)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=tarsusiv+%28axillaries%29), [ofvulcan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofvulcan/gifts).



> This is a small little thing that covers only fragments of my headcanon for Tarsus IV, while not really non-linear, it does skip around a bit.

Tarsus is warm, and lush. As a class M planet, it’s unique in it’s climate, nearly universally tropical, allowing for a great biodiversity that exponentially grew with the start of the Space Age. Nearly anything grows in the hot humid air, even little cornflowers, flourishing like weeds in the wide open spaces at the edge of the colony, their backyard. They’ve overrun the native wildflowers, sprouting throughout the fields, and covering it in a light carpet of blue. Were Kirk prone to use his vocabulary, he’d call the planet picturesque, if uncomfortable.

He would have called it that five months ago. Now, nearly everything has rotted, and the beautiful planet is a reservoir for bacteria. Several colonists who’d survived the cull have fallen ill, and others lost to starvation. But still, the boy walks. Through the blackened plants, he strides, eyes carefully searching out any blue interspersed in the field. Though flowers are not the food they desperately need, he wonders if he’ll see his aunt’s eyes soften like they used to, when she’d scold and say “boy, don’t widen those eyes at me. they may be cornflower blue, but they can’t erase common sense”. Jim thinks her eyes could use some softening.

Especially after The Executioner had determined her husband unworthy.

Especially then.

So he picks his way through necrotized vegetation, and feasting insects, carefully inspecting each flower before adding to his bouquet. He’s an eleven year old boy, too smart for his age. He’s careful. But all of the care in the world doesn’t account for the tiny spots of rot between the petals of a particularly beautiful flower. _She’ll smile at that one_ , he thinks, as he picks it up and adds it to the sizeable collection in his hand.

She’ll smile.

She does, an hour later in the cool of their house, warm and radiant like the ghost of his mother, but stronger somehow. Like not even death could shake her love. Her eyes are rimmed with red, shocking against the green of her eyes, but she takes the ragged little bouquet from her eleven year old nephew’s grasp. He sometimes still starts when gentle touches brush against his skin, but his momentary panic is worth that smile.

Or so he tries to reason as he buries his forty three year old aunt in a shallow rock grave. You’d think that an aunt who watched her sister fall apart among the stars, who buried her “unfit” husband and held her own against all the rage that an eleven year old boy can carry, could survive a measly bout of infection. But, she was only human, and he sighs, trying to shake the tremble of his hands as he dumps another fistful of rocks and soil onto her pretty flowered sundress and white blonde hair.

And that is when James T. Kirk, son of George and Winona, heir to a half collapsed house in the midst of beautiful crops and blue skies, understands. _People will leave, even when they try with all their might to stay. And if you make a space for them, they will grow inside the crevices in the deepest parts of your soul, and leave their rotted corpses behind (and it’s too much trouble to dig them out)_.

So, when the Executioner comes to the wooden house at the end of the road, with promises of death and salvation whispering behind him, the golden boy is already gone.


End file.
